Browsing Posts published in April, 2010

Our thanks to the International Fund for Animal Welfare for permission to post this article from their IFAW Animal Rescue Blog on the poaching of African wildlife for the bush-meat trade.

The Kenyan government has long recognized the high value and importance of protecting its exceptional abundance of wildlife. It therefore set land aside exclusively for the protection of flora and fauna, founding the first National Park as early as 1946.

But today, Kenyaâ€™s wildlife, inside and outside its parks, is suffering from extensive meat poaching.

Research results compiled in several reports are distressing: a large part of Kenyaâ€™s wildlife is being killed in snares and traps and being poached with bow and arrows. For the most part, these animals are not killed for subsistence use but for commercial trade. And this killing affects every animal species, from the smallest ones such as porcupines, hares, dik-diks and even baby baboons to the largest: buffaloes, zebras, lions, giraffes and elephants. continue reading…

Each week the National Anti-Vivisection Society (NAVS) sends to subscribers email alerts called â€œTake Action Thursday,â€ which tell them about actions they can take to help animals. NAVS is a national, not-for-profit educational organization incorporated in the State of Illinois. NAVS promotes greater compassion, respect and justice for animals through educational programs based on respected ethical and scientific theory and supported by extensive documentation of the cruelty and waste of vivisection. You can register to receive these action alerts and more at the NAVS Web site. This weekâ€™s â€œTake Action Thursdayâ€ focuses on dogfighting and the consequences of the Supreme Courtâ€™s decision.

Advocacy for Animals will publish a special feature on the Supreme Court decision on Monday, May 10. continue reading…

Our thanks to Michael Markarian, president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund, for permission to republish this article, which explains how state laws against the extreme confinement of farm animals benefit family farmers and rural communities.

Florida became the first state to ban gestation crates for breeding pigs in 2002, and since then, six other states have followed suit on the extreme confinement of farm animals. The Broward-Palm Beach New Times published a feature story … by Kristen Hinman looking at the national debate over farm animal welfare, which began in Florida eight years ago. There have not only been new public policies addressing these abuses, but corporate policies phasing in crate-free pork and cage-free eggs, and heightened consumer awareness about inhumane factory farming practices. continue reading…

Australian officials quickly arrested the captain and first officer, charging them with having ignored warnings to turn their ship away from the reef and illegally entered a no-trespassing zone around the fragile coral reef. As Lauren Frayer of AOL News reports, it may take 20 years to heal the resulting damage to it.

It has been a little more than 20 years now since the captain of the Exxon Valdez ran his ship aground and spilled more than 10 million gallons of oil into Alaskaâ€™s Prince William Sound. Some biologists—mostly with government and industry positions, it should be noted—assured observers that the effects would be short-term. A recent paper published in the Journal of Wildlife Management shows, quite to the contrary, that on top of the hundreds of thousands of birds and mammals killed in the immediate aftermath of the spill, populations of harlequin ducks and other animals suffered from the ill effects for a decade and a half. continue reading…

Indicators of Unnatural Change

A butterfly’s life is an epic journey in which each life-altering adventure is preceded by a swift and dramatic transformation effected through metamorphosis. The fluidity of transformation from one stage to the next is synchronous with the rhythms of nature, and similar to many other cyclic natural phenomena, the metamorphosis of butterflies is sensitive to the climatic whims of shifting seasons.

According to butterflies, however, in recent decades these seemingly trivial fluctuations in weather have been far from inconsequential. Indeed, the messages that have been relayed by the insects, namely that the temperatures in their native habitats are heating up, have resulted in the emergence of new and telling chapters in their life stories. These amendments have been necessitated by global warming, a conspicuously unnatural change in climate fueled by the heat of human activity. continue reading…

"Service Animal" Scammers (New Yorker): An increasing number of your neighbors have been keeping company with their pets in human-only establishments simply by claiming that the creatures are their licensed companion animals and are necessary to their mental well-being.